It looks like we’ll be seeing Intel’s upcoming Battlemage GPUs before the end of the year. Intel reportedly held a conference with Asus today that covered everything from updates to Intel’s current instability crisis to upcoming Arrow Lake CPUs. But an interesting tidbit about Battlemage GPUs, which are gunning for a slot among the best graphics cards, is what stood out.
VideoCardz picked up the news, which was originally shared on the Weibo forums. The poster attended the event, and they claim that Intel says Battlemage graphics cards will be out before the end of the year. That makes sense. We know Intel’s Lunar Lake CPUs, which include integrated graphics built on the same architecture, are due out in September. We’ve also seen several shipments of engineering samples emerge, suggesting a launch is close.
The post doesn’t include any photos of Battlemage, nor any slides claiming that a release is coming this year. At the moment, this is just a rumor. It’s certainly possible Battlemage shows up before the end of the year, however. It’s been two years since the release of the Arc A770 and A750, and Intel would want to get its next-gen GPUs out before the competition from AMD and Nvidia. Still, Intel hasn’t publicly confirmed its next-gen GPUs are launching before the end of the year.
Outside of GPUs, Intel had some other interesting updates. Concerning next-gen Arrow Lake desktop chips, Intel said it will be able to hit the same clock speeds that we’ve seen with 14th-gen CPUs while consuming 100 watts less. The company also assured the crowd that these CPUs will be stable — an important note with the crashing issues facing 13th-gen and 14th-gen CPUs.
The company also reportedly addressed the microcode update for 13th-gen and 14th-gen CPUs, which is due to arrive in mid-August. The report claims that this update won’t reduce performance on 13th-gen and 14th-gen CPUs, which was one of the main questions we asked Intel concerning its instability problem. Even still, the company has yet to provide Digital Trends with a statement on if the microcode update will reduce performance.
We should know more about Intel’s plans for the second half of the year in September. Following the Lunar Lake launch, Intel is holding its Innovation event on September 24, where we could hear more about Battlemage and Arrow Lake.